Here's the situation:
- A game gets a revolutionary update, which changes tons of important stuff.
- A player that was used to the old game system doesn't know how to reach their goal in the new version of the game.
- The player does not find any solutions on the internet, but finds this Q&A website called Arqade instead.
- The player creates an Arquade account and asks a version-specific question.
Ever since the release of Java Minecraft 1.13, there's loads and loads of questions like this, especially on the minecraft-commands tag.
As someone who usually tries to answer these questions, I look up the internet for out-of-date solutions, so that I can convert them into the up-to-date format.
What I usually find, though, is a question on Arqade with these out-of-date answers. When you think about it, the old posts must also be what the new user must've found. However, since they are a new user, they cannot start a bounty or anything to bring attention to the old questions, instead they have no choice but to ask a new question.
Unfortunately, these questions receive low score and little attention, as most first posts do. What this means is someone may be looking for the answer that's already out there, but they don't find it, and ask a duplicate question.
This made me think about where I should put my answer. I have the following choices:
- Answer only the new version-specific question, the new user gets what they want, but the old, more popular question is still out of date.
- Answer the old question only with an up to date answer and flag the new one as duplicate, which is unfair to the new user, which lowers the chances of him becoming a member of this community.
- Answer both. One of the questions eventually gets marked as duplicate, and the answer on it may get low score and hate.
What's the best thing to do?